Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House

Harris’s new status as the presumptive nominee set off a huge wave of public support, and donations rolled in to her campaign.

Behind the scenes, however, Harris’s campaign transition hit some road bumps. JOD, Biden’s top campaign and presidential aide, had consolidated immense authority since Biden’s 2020 victory. She was well-known for demanding loyalty from other aides, requiring them to spy for her and report back, and freezing out people who questioned her or showed disrespect. Because of this, the Biden campaign team essentially belonged to her, and she had significant clout while negotiating for a new position with the Harris campaign. The truncated nature of Harris’s presidential campaign meant that she couldn’t dismiss “the whole apparatus” (169) of Biden’s campaign team, however imperfect. However, Harris questioned JOD’s judgment, especially since she had been one of the main defenders of Biden’s mental state and—according to the authors—had personally deceived donors about his health and mental acuity. Harris ultimately decided to keep her, making her first major decision about “stability rather than change” (170).

This decision meant that Harris aides would have to fight to integrate into the existing campaign operation. Small conflicts flared up immediately, with people confused as to precedence and authority. JOD and her team seemed to focus more on establishing their authority over Harris’s vice-presidential aides than on running the campaign. This “fuckery” (172) forced Harris to resolve internal staff issues in the crucial first days of her campaign. The authors suggest that JOD in particular appeared to be more concerned with ensuring obedience and loyalty to herself than to Harris. Harris’s own loyal aides deferred to JOD in order to avoid rocking the boat, believing that they could oust her after the campaign. With such a short time frame, they couldn’t take the risk of fomenting conflict within the campaign. However, they noted with concern that JOD would push back on confirmed, objective data from respected pollsters if it didn’t align with her desires.

Harris’s vice-presidential pick, Tim Walz, the Minnesota governor, career teacher, and military service member, called Harris to pitch himself for the slot. Though Harris had been considering other candidates, Walz had the fewest liabilities, since he was universally well-liked and had dedicated most of his life to service. He was not the most skilled or strategic politician, but with the entire vast mechanism of the Democratic Party’s organizers and aides behind him, he wouldn’t have to be.

Meanwhile, Trump’s campaign team was streamlined and noticeably more professional than in his last two bids. Susie Wiles, Chris LaCivita, and Stephen Miller all ran the campaign, but had decided not to identify any one of the trio as the campaign manager, aware of Trump’s penchant for firing his number two whenever things didn’t go his way. However, Susie Wiles was his de facto manager.

Harris’s bump in the polls made Trump “angry and itchy” (184). One of his advisers, former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, told him that the bump was because of mismanagement by his team. Lewandowski was angling for one of the manager positions himself. In stark contrast to Harris’s JOD, Wiles shut down Lewandowski’s games by refusing either to tolerate power plays or to leverage them for her own benefit. She instead laid everything out for Trump, willing to leave her position if he decided to force her, but advocating for the success of the campaign over her own individual success. This strategy worked much better than JOD’s. Trump’s 2024 bid benefited from the well-traveled road map generated from two previous campaigns, with experienced operatives knowing the obstacles they needed to overcome. In contrast, Harris was forced to run her first campaign as nominee in around 100 days, with a huge, cobbled-together team of people who sometimes seemed ambivalent to her candidacy.

Despite Trump’s abysmal approval rating of 29% after reluctantly leaving the presidency in 2021, his third run for President was not a question of if, but how. Trump planned to run ever since the summer of 2022, and he strategized with his team to cast himself, once again, as the savior of a broken America. He had a few advantages over Biden, especially Biden’s decision to downplay the effects of inflation on American wellbeing and security. Biden’s dismissal of the real harms of inflation would haunt both his campaign and Harris’. Trump, as the opposition candidate, could benefit from acknowledging and even hyperbolizing the struggles American citizens were enduring, and he used those struggles to bolster his attacks against minority groups, women, and immigrants. His team also astutely convinced him to pull back his attacks against abortion and recommend that abortion laws remain in the control of individual states rather than support a national ban. These two issues made Trump an actual contender for the 2024 presidency instead of a joke, even despite his abysmal approval ratings.

However, after Biden’s withdrawal and nomination of Harris, the media focused in on her in a way that offended Trump. He was used to being the main character of the news cycle, and now Harris was receiving constant, almost-universally-positive coverage. This was a huge change from the more negative coverage of Biden, which had benefited Trump’s campaign. Both sides “understood the importance of being seen as the bigger change agent” (196). Biden’s defense of the crumbling status quo meant that Trump was rhetorically convincing as the agent of change. However, now a woman of color was entering the race, and her gender, race, and lived experience could function as powerful symbols of change.

Harris’s inner circle of close confidants, which some people referred to as “Kamalot,” strategized the best ways to maintain and increase her current lead. She could critique Biden, drawing accusations of hypocrisy given that she had publicly supported his actions while serving as his vice president, or she could maintain a diplomatic approach, refusing to critique him while acting as a symbol for change.

While Biden publicly encouraged Harris to “do what she must to win” (196) he privately instructed her to protect him and repay his trust in her by not breaking from him or his legacy. Her close circle of aides were dismayed to see how many Biden loyalists were allowed into her campaign strategy meetings, and how emphatically they argued against anything that seemed like “a rebuke of the president’s record” (198). At a rally, she “opened with an ode to Bidenomics” (198) arguing that their economy was, by all measures, the strongest in the world. She pushed the narrative that her main goal was to prevent Trump from taking power again, a statement that certainly reflected Biden’s 2020 campaign.

Biden’s first Democratic Convention as the presidential candidate had been marred by COVID, precluding the possibility of enthusiastic crowds. Now, on August 19th, 2024, the Democratic Convention that was supposed to be “his coronation” (200) would instead cast him as an opening act for the real star. The audience for his stump speech for Harris, delivered because of schedule complications at 11:25 pm, well after prime time, “detected a note of fury in his voice” (202). Over and over in his speech, he tied Harris to himself, painting a portrait of the pair as a political double act. Trump would use the same idea as an attack on Harris—tying her to Biden’s unpopular economy—and Biden strengthened Trump’s argument through his own words, though he believed it would help Harris’s case.

When Harris took the stage, the “screaming delegates in front of her” (205) seemed to indicate unstoppable momentum. An all-star lineup of political luminaries, including the Obamas and the Clintons, had warmed them up for days beforehand. Although Harris did not like being reduced to a racial, ethnic, or gender statistic, she was aware of the momentous nature of her acceptance: the first woman of color ever to accept a presidential nomination.

Trump responded to Harris’s acceptance speech live on his social media site Truth Social, attacking her for going after his policies and even calling in to Fox News to give his opinions on her statements directly afterwards.

Trump’s team, despite the setback of a new “sugar-rush surge” (208) of support for a novel candidate, were not in panic mode yet. Harris was indelibly linked to Biden, so the same arguments could be reused. Third-party candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who represented a small but compelling chunk of bipartisan voters, suspended his campaign soon after, so his right-wing supporters would flock to Trump. Additionally, none of Trump’s supporters seemed to be decamping to follow Harris, their main concern.

Harris, after announcing longtime civil servant and military serviceman Tim Walz as her running mate, was forced to decide whether to stand with Biden or separate publicly from him: to “let daylight shine between herself and Biden” (209). She chose to praise him, a decision that baffled many Democrats. However, few believed that it would derail her campaign. She had taken a lead in most polls, and Democrats mostly seemed relieved that there was finally someone new and energetic to lead the party.

Harris’s preparations to stump as Biden’s running mate were easily transferable to her run for president, since most of her attack research would be based on Trump anyway, not his running mate. She based most of her rhetoric in debate preparation on attacking Trump. Advisers believed that Biden had explicitly instructed her to “avoid embarrassing him” (212) by critiquing his policies. Harris appeared to think that it would show disorganization and chaos in the ranks to push Biden too far away from herself, and so refused to critique him.

The evening before the first (and only) 2024 presidential debate, Biden called Harris. Biden “expected Harris to protect his legacy” (214) above all. He demanded loyalty from her, reminding her of the power he had bestowed on her. He reminded her that there should be “no daylight” between them.

Before Trump’s debate with Harris, his team was scrambling for a new strategy. Harris was flawed like any candidate, but she was unlikely to respond to provocation in the same way as Biden. They decided to attack her apparent lack of a plan for the direction of the country, and if she ended up detailing plans, asking her why she hadn’t implemented them with Biden over the last four years.

Harris, meanwhile, had developed a plan of attack with a former Trump ally, Anthony Scaramucci. His infamously brief tenure as communications director of the White House, lasting only 11 days, nonetheless left Scaramucci with plenty of plans for knocking “her rival off-kilter” (216).

Harris came out swinging. Scaramucci pointed out that Trump had several sore spots, including size of crowds at his rallies, others’ perception of his intellect, and how he was seen by foreign dignitaries from around the world. Harris hit all of those points, which succeeded in agitating Trump and prompting him to defend himself for full minutes, time which would be better spent articulating his policies. Crucially, at one point, she pointed at him and said “This—” then seemed to swallow back a curse word that the authors imagine as “mothafucka” before continuing “Former president…” (219). This sort of unscripted emotion and fervor was welcome to the Democrats, and seemed like a positive improvement on Biden’s ramblings.

However, Trump managed to push back on Harris by pandering to his base, casting her as a conspiratorial enemy of the true, rural America while simultaneously claiming that her priorities would favor trans people and immigrants over everybody else. He also claimed, without evidence, that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating the pets of the town’s other residents. This became the viral debate moment, even though it was viewed so negatively by a majority of people. Trump’s team went into damage control mode, arguing that Harris still hadn’t presented a coherent plan for the nation and didn’t distance herself enough from Biden’s disastrous presidency. Harris’s team, meanwhile “felt like she had hit full stride” (221). Donations started to flow in to her campaign as a response to the perceived success.